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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28335354">A Good Night's Sleep</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wasuremono/pseuds/Wasuremono'>Wasuremono</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Horrorstör - Grady Hendrix</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Post-Canon, Domesticity, F/F, Fix-It, Flashbacks, Furniture Shopping</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 18:48:46</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,670</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28335354</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wasuremono/pseuds/Wasuremono</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Amy and Ruth Anne are moving in together, and they've got the money to buy a decent bed. Maybe Amy'll be able to put these dreams to rest.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Amy Porter/Ruth Anne DeSoto</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Yuletide Madness 2020</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>A Good Night's Sleep</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/KannaOphelia/gifts">KannaOphelia</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Content notes: this is mostly fluff, but the flashbacks contain some canon-typical horror elements.</p>
<p>I've always wanted to write some fix-it fic for Ruth Anne, and honestly, the concept of writing a Horrorstör fic with non-horrific furniture shopping was too much for me to resist. Thank you for the fun prompts, and happy Yuletide!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <i>Amy only remembers going into the wall when she dreams.</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>It's not every night, thank God, but once a week or so, she's back there: drywall and aluminum, dust and blood. She's wriggling and crawling with dreamlike slowness (but not much slower than it really was, because even her dream-mind can't make that worse), reaching out to Ruth Anne, but she's always just out of reach. Ruth Anne is grabbing at the aluminum walls, eyes frantic, but she's not screaming. Why isn't she screaming? The only sounds are the sounds of bodies: scrabbling against aluminum, dragging limbs against wall, so slow but just fast enough.</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>If the dream ends early, it ends there, with Ruth Anne just out of reach -- never any closer, no matter how hard Amy pushes herself through the ducts. Amy wakes up with her legs aching, her mouth dry and scummy, and she has no idea how she doesn't scream.</i>
</p>
<hr/>
<p>There was something about nice furniture stores that made Amy nervous. She knew it was the Orsk programming at play, all those long hours on the Bright and Shining Path, but the sprawl of little showroom setups with no rhyme or reason felt dangerously chaotic. It was surely all meticulously choreographed, but this was a place where you furniture-shopped by just... wandering around, at leisure, like browsing a furniture store was fun. Did people come in here for fun?</p>
<p>At least the mattress department was a little more orderly: lines of floor models arranged in order of firmness, mostly, with some different sections for foam versus coil. Amy had done enough research to recognize the brand names, but that was it. Still, they had a decent budget -- they had a <i>crazy</i> budget, with the settlement money -- and a pretty big bedroom in the new apartment. It was time to buy a bed.</p>
<p>"So what do you like in a bed, anyway?" Ruth Anne was walking down the aisle, looking at the specs and clearly doing some mental math. If anyone in Amy's life would know about bed specs -- well, no, it'd probably be Basil, but Ruth Anne was a close runner-up. "Firm? Soft?"</p>
<p>"Firm. I guess? I had a futon at my old place, and it wasn't soft, but I slept okay on it." Amy stepped closer to Ruth Anne and lowered her voice; she must have looked ashamed, and she realized that she was. "I've never bought a mattress before. I have no idea what I'm doing."</p>
<p>"Aw, hon, you should have said so." Ruth Anne grabbed Amy's hand and squeezed; she had to wear gloves outside of the house, but her hands were still warm even through the fabric. "Are you nervous?"</p>
<p>"A little. It's a lot of money, and it's a big purchase, and then we have to get a bedframe and design a whole room, and it's. A lot."</p>
<p>Ruth Anne frowned, tight and fleeting, and lowered her own voice. "I meant to talk to you about that. There are some things I've been thinking about, with the room, how I want to lay it out. Is that okay?"</p>
<p>"Of course it's okay!" Now it was Amy's turn to console. She leaned in to offer a hug, the longest one she could risk knowing there was probably a sales clerk on the way to see what they were lingering over. "Whatever you want. It's fine. It's great."</p>
<p>"It's not great, but..." Ruth Anne straightened up a little and let go of Amy's hand; from behind her, Amy could hear the footsteps of a sales clerk. "Later. Let's help this lady earn her commission."</p><hr/>
<p>
  <i>The longer the dream goes on, the closer Amy gets to grabbing Ruth Anne's hand: inch by inch, agonizing progress over what feels like hours, days, years. If she manages six hours of sleep, the longest she's lasted since Orsk, she manages to just barely make contact with Ruth Anne's bony fingertips. She grasps and holds, just for the barest second -- and then Ruth Anne pulls her hands back, her eyes dead, and Amy wakes up.</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>It didn't happen that way, Amy tells herself when she wakes from the dream; it couldn't have. Ruth Anne is alive. They made it out, and they're dating, and life's as good as it could be -- Orsk is even covering the medical bills, somehow -- there's money for the new apartment, and maybe for college. They're out of the Beehive. But there's a huge gap in her memory, and it feels like the dreams are trying to tell her what she's blotted out.</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>Six hours of sleep is better than nothing. Amy can function on six hours of sleep, even if she's going to be lying in bed awake for a few hours waiting for her alarm. The worse part is not knowing how this ends.</i>
</p><hr/>
<p>After the furniture-delivery truck left, the first thing Amy and Ruth Anne did was pull the bedroom closet door off its hinges. The first rule of the DeSoto-Porter bedroom: no hidey holes. </p>
<p>The bed ended up in the middle of the north wall, set perpendicular so only the headboard touched the wall. The idea had seemed strange to Amy at first, imagining it with a twin bed or a futon in a small space, but with the queen bed and bigger bedroom, it looked pretty all right: like a fine-furniture showroom piece, or maybe a Price Is Right showcase. There was just enough space on each side for a nightstand, dresser, and a narrow but serviceable walkway. Even in light wood, it was an imposing setup, but more to the point, it was a fortress.</p>
<p>The second rule of the DeSoto-Porter bedroom: no access to the bed from the walls.</p>
<p>Amy wasn't sure this wasn't a hidey hole on some level, but it was comfortable enough, and why argue? If they hated it, they could always move the furniture. (Not easily -- the problem with buying nice solid-wood stuff was that it was heavy as Hell -- but completely possible.) If this was what Ruth Anne wanted, what could it hurt?</p>
<p>Ruth Anne, meanwhile, was hanging up a few old concert posters in picture frames. "A little color," she said. "Make it a little more fun in here."</p>
<p>"Works for me," said Amy as she made the bed. They'd gotten pale green sheets with a red-flowered comforter. the kind of thing that would have fit right in as one of Orsk's "fun" prints, but honestly? it <i>was</i> kind of fun. Hadn't they always had at least one bedroom model like that? The "you don't have to give up whimsy when you plan your grown-up bedroom, which we will pretend is dignified even though it's all flat-pack from Orsk" look? They'd gotten away from the flat-pack, but they could still go a little kitschy.</p>
<p>Once Amy'd made the bed, she sat down and looked around. It was starting to look... homey. Actually, kind of grown-up, but not sterile. Nice. "You know," she said, "I'm getting a kick out of this. Having a new place, actually decorating. I've never really done this before."</p>
<p>"Then knock yourself out," replied Ruth Anne. "Get into it. Start collecting lamps or something. I want you to have a little fun."</p>
<p>"Ugh, no. I'm not going to be that kind of roommate. I mean -- that kind of girlfriend. If you wanted to, maybe, but..." Amy flopped down on the bed. "I have no idea what I'm doing. With anything."</p>
<p>"Neither do I," said Ruth Anne. "Let's just do it together and see what happens. Like picking out the bed: just try things out and see what we like."</p>
<p>Amy wanted to make a smart remark about having a smiling saleslady looming over them the entire time, too, but when Ruth Anne laid down next to her, she just closed her eyes and pulled her close. One hand stroked Ruth Anne's hair as her girlfriend (her <i>girlfriend,</i> a thing that was real and good, that she had to remind herself was real) snuggled into her chest. This was a good place, a safe place, and they had time to figure it all out.</p><hr/>
<p>
  <i>The dream comes back on the first night on the new bed. Amy's scrabbling for hours, as usual -- then getting closer, as usual -- and then, at last, grabbing for Ruth Anne's hand. She gets a grip on her fingertips, pulling herself forward to try and grab her by the palm and wrist. Ruth Anne's arms are slippery with blood, and any second now she's going to pull away --</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>But Ruth Anne doesn't pull away from her this time. Something in her eyes blazes, and she kicks and thrashes; there's a solid thump as her feet meet flesh, and a hissing screech. Amy can hear the monsters flailing, but Ruth Anne's broken away, and she has a grip on Amy's hands.</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>Amy pulls Ruth Anne back through the ductwork, and Ruth Anne pushes, and they're making progress. The creatures are going faster, though, now that they're not dragging a captive. Amy can't see a damn thing, but she can hear the scrabbling, and it's getting louder. She braces against the wall and starts to feel the old, shitty drywall give -- a moment of panic, and then the epiphany.</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>Amy and Ruth Anne fall through the wall and roll together, and they're out of the ductwork, sprawled across the Bright and Shining Path. Amy's exhausted, and Ruth Anne's badly hurt, but they're alive. She did it. They did it.</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>This is how it went, Amy thinks, in a lucid moment. This is what really happened, what I've forgotten. There was worse to come, so much worse, but she saved her. She hugs Ruth Anne to her, and Ruth Anne clutches her close, and Amy lets the dream fade.</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>She wakes up to her alarm, eight and a half hours after going to bed, and turns off the beeping before it can wake Ruth Anne up next to her. The bed's firm, but not too firm. Just right.</i>
</p>
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